The Compound

by Aisling Rawle

It was easier now, to talk without revealing personal information. It limited your conversation, but if you just emptied your brain and said whatever came to mind, it was enjoyable in its own way.

It felt like a vulgar thing, to admit to how much it thrilled me: the promise of material things, the rush you get from obtaining something new, something better than you had before.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to go home. The endless talk of the wars, and the masks that we wore in the cities and big towns, and the dreary gray skies, and evenings in front of the television.

Going home and dreading doing it again the next day, and still never having enough money. And what was the point of it anyway, if I was never going to be able to afford nice things, or have anything worth owning—when we all would probably be dead in twenty years, maybe thirty if we were lucky?

What did it matter to wake up at the same time every morning and wear the same clothes and try to eat more protein but less sugar, when an earthquake or a tsunami or a bomb might end it all at any minute? Or maybe we would all continue to boil, slowly but surely, in the mess that we pretended was an acceptable place to live.

I knew from watching the show that when a person was banished at dawn they were woken by a vibration in the mattress; if you didn’t rise immediately, the mattress heated to the point of burning.

We were silent for a short time. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I came on the show?” “No,” she said. “I don’t need you to explain it. You’re the kind of girl the show was made for.”

Was this how it was always going to turn out? If I stayed here, would I always be under the threat of their strength, the end to every argument, the solution to any problem? Even dehydrated and weak, Tom had knocked me about like I was nothing. Andrew, too, hadn’t hesitated to become a brute when he needed to. But hadn’t I done the same, by helping Becca to keep the water hidden? If I had their strength, would I not use it?

But why was Tom still here? There was likely a group of viewers who disliked him—but there must have been another group of people who wanted him to stay; people who agreed with him, who saw something in him that they liked.

I thought for a few moments. It seemed obvious enough, depressing though it was. I was there because I thought that this was what I was supposed to want: the house and the rewards and all the nice things. Andrew was there because he had a need to exert control coupled with a crippling fear of loneliness.